New World
by Foxy'sGirl
Summary: Sometimes the only thing scarier than someone not coming back, is someone who always does. Beth Greene introspection, very very light CarlxBeth.


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Before Zack, there was Dan, but he didn't last long. Anyone that carelessly handsome is bound to be just plain careless as well. Zack made a good show of it, really, made it through four or five supply runs until it all caught up with him.

Anyway, he'd only killed 20 walkers before he found the prison, and she'd successfully avoided getting her hopes up this time.

In the beginning, there was Jimmy, but he'd never really bridged the gap into the world where they'd never be going back to high school. She remembers him talking about getting back to football practice, so blonde and tan and typical that she thought her heart was going to beat out of her chest.

Beth was a kid then, but she guesses they all were.

Opening that barn was opening Pandora's box, and they could never stuff all that evil back into hiding.

She remembers when she thought it was her decision whether she'd last another day. But nothing ever proved God's power more than her pushing through, guided by something clinging to life foolishly hard. She got back up, and greeted the new world with open apprehension.

Maggie wasn't the same anymore, the wild child of the tame family replaced by someone steady. Her dad was downright _sober_, regardless of how much he'd been drinking. Jimmy was nervous and trembling, and only a part of the Quarterback catch that he used to be.

She saw it in the other group too, back when it was us and them, like rows of fruit trees in an orchard.

Andrea was hard, Rick was nervous. Daryl was defeated and Carol was numb, but it'd be months before she realized the moment that their expressions became akin to hers, plain as day.

Lori was cautious, and with good reason, given her predicament.

Carl was _voracious_. Curious, and determined to break out of his 12 year old shell.

She remembers it was the first time she saw him as anything but _shot_, and his attitude was really the only one she could relate to. Everything happening, the sick being dead and the dead rising from their grave like a cheap drive in movie, it didn't make her steady like Maggie. She didn't feel serious like her dad or hardened like Andrea or even nervous like Rick. She outgrew defeat when she let her daddy stitch her wrists, and she was anything but numb, realizing the vastness of her new world for the first time.

Beth knew she should be cautious, but it didn't seem like something she really had to think about. They were in the middle of nowhere, and God hadn't thrown any stones at them yet that they hadn't been able to catch.

She wanted to find her place in the new world, like she used to know where she belonged in her old life.

She was Beth Greene, Maggie's younger, less adventurous sister. Jimmy's pretty girlfriend. Concert choir tenor, and most likely to live within five miles of her parents for her whole life.

Even now, when they've been living in a _prison_, of all places, for an entire year, the adults who were adults when the world ended are confused. They don't get that this place is _new_, somewhere beyond and below where they all were before.

It's worse and better and different and the same, all at once. Incomparable, but deserving of its own recognition.

It's a world of commitment and transience, and obligations to the community above individuals. Her daddy would have ranted about this communist existence for hours back in her young Republican days, but here he is, clean shaven face hidden under a Woodstock beard as he farms without grain markets and cares for people like he used to care for animals.

What really bugs Beth is everyone's resistance to change in the face of new threats, and new challenges. It seems like the kids know, even if they don't think about it too much. Right now, Judy knows that Beth is mommy, and Lizzie knows more about life and death than a 12 year old would have been able to figure out before. Patrick denied what he knew to be true about death in order to tell himself he'd be ok, and a lot of people died.

Carl knows how to shoot, and what it feels like to kill in cold blood, but that doesn't really seem so shocking.

Sure, he's a _kid_ by old world standards, but at the prison he seems older than everyone cowering in the inside block, staring at the fence of walkers they wouldn't dare take on. She and Carl don't mind killing at the fence, and the fact that it still makes some people uncomfortable makes her nervous.

The dead are dangerous, and people die all the time now. Zack being eaten made him a walker, and walkers ain't worth thinking about.

God rewrote the playing field, but it's still black and white, and all the lines are straight. He dotted his I's and crossed his t's, and there's still plenty of beauty to thank him for.

She's lucky she got to appreciate Jimmy's classic bravery, and Dan's devil-may-care heroism. She wouldn't trade that month with Zack's shedding caution for the world.

Some things linger, stronger than the laws of life falling apart, and she still gets to see Maggie's heartbreak and happiness as she vies to live and Glen insists on surviving. The role of supportive sister won't change for anything, not even an apocalypse.

She gets to see Daryl learning to lead and Rick learning to listen.

And she gets to see Carl, determined as she is to grow up in the world as it is, not as it was.

Already, he shoots straighter and quicker than almost everyone else, and he doesn't take so long thinking about old world morality. She's almost sure that when everyone else is pinned through their Achilles heel, he'll still be coming back.

Glen will do something dumb for Maggie, and then she'll mess up out of sadness. Her father will do it for what used to be right, and Rick will fail because he can't tell anymore. Daryl will go out with a boom, and leave the world safer than he found it, and Michonne will probably be with him, slashing and hacking until a noble end.

But Carl…

It's dangerous to think this way.

She doesn't want to _care_. She doesn't want to have that strong determination towards his safety weighing her down. He'll come back, like always, until she starts to expect it, until she starts to _want_ it.

Until he's not a kid anymore, until thirteen and sixteen becomes fifteen and eighteen. Until twenty and twenty three isn't even an age difference anymore.

Until they're two naturalized immigrants in a new time, and everyone else has faded into the pages of a history book that no one will ever print.

Maybe it's safer to assume he'll go out with Rick in a blaze of glory.

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**Just a thought, reviews are beyond appreciated! Especially constructive criticism…**


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